Thanks to the Irish lasses knocking off the Black Ferns (which I went when I saw the result this morning) it has thrown the tournament open, with the NZ v Eng final everyone was hoping for possibly coming up in the semis. It has also turned the final round of games into virtual quarter finals, with in realistic terms, only Ireland are assured passage (assuming that Kazakhstan don't pull off the mother of all upsets).

Given the for and against differences, I would assume that the winner of England/Canada would end up as the number 1 seed, unless France has a big win over Australia. Ireland would likely become the second or third seed (which is of no difference), and will likely play the winner of France/Australia. New Zealand and USA, unless their are significant bonus points won by the loser of England/Canada or by France in a loss to Australia, will come in as 4th seed.

rampage wrote:Thanks to the Irish lasses knocking off the Black Ferns (which I went when I saw the result this morning) it has thrown the tournament open, with the NZ v Eng final everyone was hoping for possibly coming up in the semis. It has also turned the final round of games into virtual quarter finals, with in realistic terms, only Ireland are assured passage (assuming that Kazakhstan don't pull off the mother of all upsets).

Given the for and against differences, I would assume that the winner of England/Canada would end up as the number 1 seed, unless France has a big win over Australia. Ireland would likely become the second or third seed (which is of no difference), and will likely play the winner of France/Australia. New Zealand and USA, unless their are significant bonus points won by the loser of England/Canada or by France in a loss to Australia, will come in as 4th seed.

rampage wrote:Thanks to the Irish lasses knocking off the Black Ferns (which I went when I saw the result this morning) it has thrown the tournament open, with the NZ v Eng final everyone was hoping for possibly coming up in the semis. It has also turned the final round of games into virtual quarter finals, with in realistic terms, only Ireland are assured passage (assuming that Kazakhstan don't pull off the mother of all upsets).

Given the for and against differences, I would assume that the winner of England/Canada would end up as the number 1 seed, unless France has a big win over Australia. Ireland would likely become the second or third seed (which is of no difference), and will likely play the winner of France/Australia. New Zealand and USA, unless their are significant bonus points won by the loser of England/Canada or by France in a loss to Australia, will come in as 4th seed.

ugrugbychiclet wrote:IRB really needs to introduce quarter finals to this cup. We need to watch more exciting games not just a handful of them ...

Quarter finals shouldn't be introduced until there is 16 teams competing in the group stage. Are we ready for 16 teams competing in world cup?

That's one of the problems with women's rugby... There are about six teams that could beat any other team given the right bit of luck / skill / conditions, but then after that, the quality drops off fast.

Anyway, my excitement for Ireland beating New Zealand didn't last long... I was pretty disappointed when I realised it really reduced Canada's chances of getting through to the semi's. Hopefully we can pull of a win against England like we did in the Nations Cup... but I understand that wasn't England's top flight of players.

With two high-level matches won Vs USA and Black Ferns, Ireland climbs to the 4th place.I think that this place will change next saturday because Ireland will play Kazakhstan (a low-level match) and Canada (5th, just behind them) will play England. And the level of the match is the most important criteria in my rankings.

No change in the 3 first places for England, New Zealand and France.In the 7 best teams of this World Cup (USA is 6th), Australia only isn't in the top of this rankings, but only because they didn't play any match between August 2010 and June 2014. But, 11th now, they progress slowly but surely.

The rest of the ranking : Wales is still 7th, Spain & South Africa go over Italy (10th now), Scotland is 12th before Samoa and Kazakhstan which goes over Sweden & Netherlands.

iul wrote:How are your rankings being calculated? What is the criteria?

Basically, it's the same as the IRB rankings, but with a different way for on-boarding new teams.

If a new team plays a ranked team and wins, the teams initial ranking is ( ranked team + 5 ), but if they lose it is ( ranked team - 5 ).

This had an unfortunate side effect: Uganda played against a high-ranked South Africa and lost, so were given the initial ranking of 29.75. Then, they were beaten twice by Kenya, the first time being Kenya's initial ranking, 34.75, and then again a week later, putting Kenya to 35.05. Kenya is, by my calculations, sitting in 10th place, however because I know this isn't accurate currently, I'm omitting them.

I decided to do this because there were a couple things I didn't like about Serge's ranking.1. It rewards teams for playing more often.2. As teams don't play, their ranking is reduced. This problem is evidenced by Australia being artificially low in his rankings.3. He includes matches played with "A" teams towards the national team ranking.

I feel like a good ranking system should be able to accurately predict who will win. Because of that, I've been keeping track of who he says is ranked higher, vs who I say is ranked higher. Most of them have been the same, however we've had a different higher-ranked team three times so far:

For every international match, I attribute since 1871 for men and 1982 for women points to every country as a sum of several elements.I mainly take into account the match level (generally the points average of the 2 teams before the match, with minima) and the kind of result (400 for a win, 200 for a draw, 100 for a defeat or 0 for a forfeit in an official competition).But I count too the match venue (0 or 25 at home according to the opponent from the continent or not, 25 in an other country of its own continent, 50 on neutral ground, 75 in a country of the continent of its opponent, 100 or 75 away according to the opponent), the number of scored points and the difference between the number of scored points and the number of scored points by the opponent.Finally, I add a bonus for WRC (50 in qualifying, 100 in final phase, 150 in play offs and 200 in the final).

There are a few exceptions in this method, in particular when countries play A, B , Emerging, Amateur, Junior, Student, Army, Police or Services teams, even provinces or clubs in official competitions.In an official competition too, results of A, B, Emerging or Juniors teams can make move marginally the concerned country points, with a specific calculation.Finally, matches results with « special » teams (British Lions, Barbarians, Nomads, Maoris, Pacific Islanders…) are counted and these teams classified apart.

The points number after the match is equal to the sum of 10% of the match points and 90 % of the points number before the match (possibly 20% and 80% for women's teams who play few or in world cup). This method allows to take less into account surprises and requires regularity in performance to progress. Besides, it favors countries the level of which improves by often playing to the detriment of those who play few, the number moreover decreasing in 2% each year.

Other rankings

I did this men’s rankings (besides a specific ranking for World cups only) because I wasn’t enough satisfied by the official IRB’s ranking which presents according to me many qualities but which, and I regret it, only concerns a restricted number of countries (102 at present). http://www.irb.com/rankings/full.htmlThe ranking doesn’t take in account the level of the teams which is the main criterion I retain for every match because the IRB’s principle is simple : the winner gains some points, the loser loses them.It doesn’t take more in account the matches Vs teams I called special, those Vs, especially, not IRB members, even for a tournament organized by an IRB affiliated federation and even those Vs ranked teams but with a more or less than 10 points difference in a ranking from 0 to 100.Finally, any (rare) introduction in the IRB’s rankings is arbitrarily fixed to the same level (30 points since December 2012, 1st and 40 before), whatever are the previous results of the countries which had to (officially but it wasn’t still the case) have played at least 10 matches to be classified.

grande wrote:If a new team plays a ranked team and wins, the teams initial ranking is ( ranked team + 5 ), but if they lose it is ( ranked team - 5 ).This had an unfortunate side effect: Uganda played against a high-ranked South Africa and lost, so were given the initial ranking of 29.75. Then, they were beaten twice by Kenya, the first time being Kenya's initial ranking, 34.75, and then again a week later, putting Kenya to 35.05. Kenya is, by my calculations, sitting in 10th place, however because I know this isn't accurate currently, I'm omitting them.

In Serge's, the initial ranking is 0 pt.When Uganda played against South Africa, they were respectively ranked 27th with 889 points and 10th with 3850 points before the game, 24th with 1053 and 10th with 3849 after.With such a level difference, SA, which played a low-level team, would have to win with more than 60 ground points to have more ranking points but Uganda, which played a very high-level team, won many points, even if they lossed.When ugs were beaten twice by Kenya, they were respectively ranked 25th with 1032 points and 28th with 884 points before the both games, 26th with 1066 and 25th with 1102 after.Impossible so to see Kenya too high...

And Australia, which didn't play any XV game during 46 months (!!!!!) went down from 7th place after WRWC 2010 (only but it was already the same case) to 12th before 2014's.In any sport, it isn't enough to be brilliant in a single competition to be well ranked but it's necessary to be present in the others, what is not the case of Australia in XV women's rugby. But we can recognize that, potentially, they should be in the first ones.Imagine that USA men, who didn't play any test-match between 1924 and 1976, went down from 9th place to 50th !

Two years for men and one for women were necessary to compile data and to realize multiple tests which allowed to validate the method of Serge's rankings...

But it's always a good thing to have different views about the question. Go on grande, go on Serge and come back Roon Ba !

Spain has played Samoa twice before, both times in the 2006 World Cup. Spain won both times, however neither of them were decisive victories. I expect Spain will still come out on top but, as we saw in 2006, just barely.

Ireland beating the Black Ferns has thrown the entire tournament into disarray. Both teams had a very good chance to move on, having both picked up bonus points in both their previous games. However, it's now unlikely that both will move on, unless the losing team can come away with both BPs.

This will be the 21st time Canada has faced off versus England; England has won all but two of the previous encounters. Canada has beaten England fairly recently, in the Nations Cup, however that was a weaker English team. England will be missing Thompson, and is starting three uncapped players, but will that be enough? Doubtful. As much as it pains me to say, I'm calling an English victory.

Ireland has faced Kazakhstan four times prevously. It may surprise some of you to know Kazakhstan won three of those games. However, those wins were all over 14 years ago, and the landscape of women's rugby has changed a lot in that time. Ireland should win easily.

Much like Canada vs England, this game is an un-official semi-final. Both teams need a win to even be in the running, and need bonus points to secure a place. This one will be very interesting to watch.

Despite these two teams being fairly big names in Women's Rugby, they've only played each other 7 times, and haven't played at all in the past decade. New Zealand has won 6 of the encounters, with the US's only win in the semi-finals of the 1991 World Cup, which they went on to win.

June 13, 2004: New Zealand 35-0 United States (Churchill Cup)September 27, 2000: New Zealand 45-0 United States (Canada Cup)October 19, 1999: New Zealand 65-6 United States (Triangular '99)May 16, 1998: New Zealand 44-12 United States (World Cup final)September 11, 1996: New Zealand 88-8 United States (Canada Cup)

Two teams looking for their first win. Five previous match-ups, all five in the past decade. Wales has won three of the five, but each one has been fairly close. They played twice in the previous World Cup, South Africa winning in the pool stage, and Wales winning in the 9th place final. Despite this game not meaning much in the terms of the World Cup, it should be a pretty good fixture.

Our third "unofficial semi-final." France should win. They've been the better team so far, and they're playing at home. Personally, I've got a bug up my ass about Australia; I'm angry that they barely played any games between the previous World Cup and now, when I feel like they should be a leader in the sport. Because of that, I hope France fucking annihilates them, but I would be awfully surprised.

Three previous fixtures between this pairing, stretching back to 1998, all three of them during World Cups. Australia won most recently, capturing 3rd place in the 2010 World Cup, but France claimed the previous two matches.

- France is currently on the longest winning streak, at 9 matches. The only team close to that is England, at 6 (their last defeat vs France in this year's Six Nations).- Four teams currently are on three-game losing streaks: Wales, South Africa, Spain, and Samoa. Since those four teams are playing each other, we'll probably have two teams on four game losing streaks very shortly.- The only match where serge & I have a different higher ranked team is Wales vs South Africa. I'll be watching it closely

A bit tighter than expected but Ireland should pull away more in the 2nd half. I guess they might be resting some players but were still banking on a BP win even though it's a luxury they don't need.

Ireland won 40-5Ireland made 10 changes from the New Zealand gameKazakstan were v physical and took a while to wear down but good performance from IrelandJust have to wait on the other games to see who we face in the semis